Hello from the UN Climate Talks in Poznan, Poland! The AYCC has had a huge week – we are exhausted but successful. As a snap shot of our activities:
- We are building a international youth movement, helping to organise and facilitate an international youth conference on the weekend before the UN Conference, and then helping to build structures for youth to work together globally throughout 2009. Young people from around the world are using the conference as a forum to share ideas, resources and plan for coordinated action throughout 2009.
- We are pressuring the government through meeting with negotiators (and fingers crossed Minister Wong), participating in three side events, the Australian media and supporting other countries to pressure our government.
- We are helping to shift the international negotiations, joining with international youth to run dynamic actions highlighting key issues for the conference, for instancehttp://blogs.reuters.com/environment/2008/12/05/un-climate-talks-leave-youth-out-in-the-cold/
- We are spearheading a new initiative to support government delegations from the Pacific who are under resourced by providing them we youth interns during the conference – we are already sitting in on official meetings for countries and feeding back information to them. This is important as many countries that are suffering the most from climate change have difficulty getting their voices heard at the United Nations because they have few resources.
- We have released a short film on the Pacific at the conference as a vehicle for bringing youth voices of the Pacific to the United Nations - http://www.aycc.org.au/aycc/dev/ayd/pci_final_comp.mov
- International youth is working together to get youth constituency status at the united nations and to ensure that youth is better represented on official delegations – currently only 3 governments have any youth representation.
- We are creating a video documentary of our experience which will feed into our schools program next year, as well as interviewing important and interesting people attending the conference to build capacity back home.
- The conference is also helping to build the capacity of the AYCC with all 20 of our delegates learning so much and connecting with some amazing people.
Check out the AYCC profiled in the Age!
Although they did edited out most of my hard hitting comments…
And you know you’ve made it when you get a scathing attack from Andrew Bolt:
Watch out for an article on our work in the SMH on Monday and some op eds next week, as well as a range of international youth actions that will hopefully shake things up a bit.
On a personal note, it has been wonderful for me watching our delegates develop during the experience so far, as well as to see the international youth movement grow exponentially – there are 500 young people from over 50 countries here working together in a spirit of collaboration. Its wonderful to be a part of 
despite being ridiculously tired, stiff from so many meetings sitting on uncomfortable floors, and undernourished from eating strange over priced yuck conference food 
